er allured. Sometimes as I was dozing in my
sleeping car, I heard her chirping voice, "Bappa, come here. I need
you." The memory of her small soft body, her trusting eyes, the arch of
her brows, made me impatient of my lecture tours. She was my incentive,
my chief reason for living and working, and from each of my predatory
sorties, I returned to her with a thankfulness which was almost
maudlin--in Fuller's eyes. To have her joyous face lifted to mine, to
hear her clear voice repeating my mother's songs, restored my faith in
the logic of human life. True she interrupted my work and divided my
interest, but she also defended me from bitterness and kept me from a
darkening outlook on the future. My right to have her could be
questioned but my care of her, now that I had her, was a joyous task.

It would not be quite honest in me if I did not admit that this
intensity of interest in my daughter took away something from my
attitude as a husband, just as Zulime's mother love affected her
relationship to me. A new law was at work in both our cases, and I do
not question its necessity or its direction. Three is a larger number
than two, and if the third number brings something unforeseen into the
problem it must be accepted. Mary Isabel strengthened the bond between
Zulime and myself, but it altered its character. Whatever it lost in one
way it gained in another.

Dear little daughter, how she possessed me! Each day she presented some
new trait, some new accomplishment. She had begun to understand that
Daddy was a writer and that he must not be disturbed during the morning,
but in spite of her best resolutions she often tip-toed to my door to
inquire brightly, "Poppie, can I come in? Don't you want me?" Of course
I wanted her, and so frequently my work gave place to a romp with her.
In the afternoons I often took her for a walk or to coast on her new
sled rejoicing in the picture she made in her red cloak and hood.

In her presence my somber conceptions of life were forgotten. Joyous and
vital, knowing nothing of my worries, she comforted me. She was no
longer the "baby" she was "Wenona," my first born, and in spirit we were
comrades. More and more she absorbed my thought. "Poppie, I love you
better than anything," she often said, and the music of her voice misted
my eyes and put a lump into my throat.

When summer came and we went back to the Homestead, I taught her to
drive Old Smoker, Uncle William's horse. Under my dire